Directed By Buddy Beale Starring Tiffany Shepis, Beverly Lynne, Ander Page Rated R USA
"We're definitely better than the Lollipop Guild."
I'm sure I've groused about this already, but I've never really understood this whole 'softcore' sex trip- I mean, have you ever had softcore sex? I think I might have once, in the parking lot of the Ground Round, but I'm still not sure about that one. Still, there's gotta be a big, meaty market for the stuff, since Playboy (who produced this dizzy little epic) has a whole network dedicated to non-insertion sex. Still. In 2009. It's pretty crazy. At any rate, the idea of a hard 'R' rated flick about an all girl rock and roll band clawing their way to the top brought to my fevered mind classic cinematrosities like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Desperate Teenage Love Dolls and Down and Out with the Dolls- hell, 'Dolls' is even in the title- so I was pretty excited to see this one.
Curses. Foiled again.
Vinyl Dolls starts the same way every movie about a rock band does- with the guitar player quitting in a huff, right before a major gig. They never play her songs, man. "Fuck this band," snorts Alex-the-guitar player (C Ashleigh), "And fuck you, Samantha." Samantha (Beverly Lynne) is the bass player. The one who says what everybody's thinking. You know the type.
So Alex splits, which is a serious snag, since she does it right before the girls have to play "12 sold out shows in a week!" I don't know if any band in the history of rock and roll has had a schedule like this. Certainly not a local LA club band. Certainly not a local LA club band that sounds like some half-assed cross between Janis Joplin and Kelly Clarkson. Anyway, this short-haired chick, Nola (Tiffany Shepis) rolls into town from Las Vegas- she's on the run from her drug dealer boyfriend, of course- and shows up last for replacement guitarist auditions. Naturally, she's the best guitar player they ever heard.
She gets the job, and they proceed to play said 12 sold-out shows. How she manages to learn the band's songs in one day is yet another curious mystery of Vinyl Dolls. Things are going swell for the band until the drug dealer boyfriend shows up, and then all hell breaks loose.
Luckily, Nola happens to be banging the local sheriff, who solves the only dramatic dilemma in the entire film with a couple punches to Mr. Coke Dealer's nose. Everybody lives happily ever after. Except for me, maybe.
Every scene in Vinyl Dolls is punctuated with a ten-minute phony sex scene. So, if you're just looking for story, you can get through it all in 20 minutes, which is merciful. If you really do wanna watch faux-sex (erotica, some might call it), then I'd say you oughta pay close attention to the band's drummer, Ander Page. I think she's got three grope-a-dope scenes in this one, and there's a good reason why she's so convincing in them- she's actually a porn star. Or at least she was -her trail ran cold around 2006, but not before she left behind a legacy of seriously raunchy sex flicks. It's a real gas watching her in the 'behind the scenes' featurette, talking about trying to get over her nervousness at getting naked in front of a room full of people for this production. I'm guessing her first ATM scene over at the Redlight Disctrict warehouse cured that up, but quick. Still, I mean, look at this face - is this a porn star face?
Clearly, Miss Page took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
The other main actresses, Tiffany Shepis and Beverly Lynne, have taken less slippery slopes to the Playboy studios, bein' a rock video girl and a low rent scream queen respectively, but neither of them can act nearly as well as the lovely Ms. Page. They all look good naked, tho, and something tells me that mattered a tad bit more during the casting call for this one.
I think the most remarkable aspect of Vinyl Dolls, however, is the music. For a movie about a rock and roll band, the songs they play are about as far away from rock as you can get. Not surprisingly, a guy named Herman Beeftink" (!) wrote 'em all. They sound exactly like the work of one of those sweaty guys running around LA all day shoving their demos into the hands of any A&R hack they can find- "You gotta hear my new song, it's perfect for Britney!" You know the type, or at least you've seen them on TV. The music on Vinyl Dolls is the work of all those clowns rolled into one. Director Beale must either be 60 years old or deaf to buy into Beeftink's cracked musical vision.
Of course, despite all this, I still watched the whole thing. Why? Tits. That's why. Same as you. If you really want to see a phony all girl band frolicking around, tho, I'd suggest the similarly themed Heartstrings, from VCA. At least that one's got anal scenes.
PS: The movie's called Vinyl Dolls, yet the DVD cover prominently features a CD. That's not right.
PPS: Tiffany Shepiswent on to become the coolest girl in the world.
Directed by Derek Ford Starring Nicholas Field, Felicity Devonshire, Julia Bond Rated R UK
"You stupid girl! I told you to prick his boil!"
From everything I've read about the man, writer/director Derek Ford was a perpetually horned-up pussy-hound who made sexploitation movies mostly because it afforded him easy access to tender young flesh. Starting with 1969's This, That, and the Other, he spent nearly a decade cranking out low-budget sex-coms like this one, including several with wife-swapping themes, a topic the married Ford was especially interested in. In fact, Ford's wife Valerie sometimes served as his assistant director, shooting hardcore inserts in their own home to tag onto racy "European" cuts of his films. This would certainly account for the brevity (77 minutes) and choppy editing of What's Up Nurse!. Not that it matters, really. The what-the-fuck editing job only adds to the movie's grimy, bedraggled charm. It is clearly the work of a man who likes tits and laughs, and pretty much hates everything else.
Everything about What's Up Nurse! is half-assed, including the title. Where's the question mark and the comma? Say it loud with the exclamation point. It makes no sense. Also, it's not even about nurses. There's three nurses in the film, but two of them don't even have names, and none of them have a significant role. I am sure there's some method to this film-title madness, but I am not privy to it.
The film opens with a train ride. Olivia (the incredibly named Felicity Devonshire) reads The Story of O and occasionally fondles herself. She's sharing a seat with a dashing young doctor, Robert 'Sweeney' Todd (Nicholas Field), who cannot help but notice the pretty blonde with the wandering fingers. Naturally, he introduces himself. He tells her he's a doctor, about to start an internship at a local hospital.
"Seeing as you're a doctor, perhaps you can help me. I have a little problem," Olivia says. "Can I show it to you?"
He agrees to look at it, whatever it is, and she starts walking over to the bathroom.
"Are you coming?" She asks.
"Very nearly," he cheekily answers.
They crowd into the bathroom and she yanks her shirt open as the infectious psych-pop theme song ('The Love Bug', by Tony Burrows) kicks in.
The two attempt to make sweet 70's love while the train barrels down the tracks, but the young doctor finds himself in a delicate predicament.
"I'm...I'm stuck!" He says.
"Yes, well, that's my problem!" the girl tells him.
They call for help, and the creaky old ticket-puncher shows up.
"Oh dear," he says. "I hope you haven't been like that since the train was in the station."
At the next stop they call for an ambulance, and the still-stuck couple are whisked off to a tiny hospital, Banham on Sea General. They get wheeled in, and a ditzy nurse (Julia Bond) takes a look under the sheet.
"Are they Siamese twins?" She asks.
Grumpy Doctor Ogden (John LeMesurier, RIP), called away from his golf game, prepares to separate them via an injection of some sort, and grouses about being disturbed on his day off.
"I'm on my own," he snorts. "It's awfully difficult, because this idiot intern hasn't arrived yet. There's no sign of him at all."
"Well," the young doctor stammers, "That's the thing, sir. I am your intern. I'm Dr. Todd."
Doc Ogden is suitably outraged. It gets worse, however, when he finally gets an eyeful of the blonde with the convulsive vadge.
"Hi, daddy!" She says.
"I see you've met my daughter Olivia," says the mortified Ogden.
Ha ha, what a mix-up!
After he's finally released from Olivia's iron grip, Dr. Todd heads over to his new home, a furnished room in the home of sexy widow Helen Arkwright (Angela Grant). After meeting a neighbor who spouts an amazing, innuendo laden monologue about the comings and goings of all the boat-loving folk in their seaside neighborhood ("You know that young fisherman down at number 13, well, last night was trying out his dinghy for size, to see if it was big enough..."), she points him towards the Cleopatra, the yacht Helen owns. After dumping a bucket of water on his head, she invites him on board and then seduces him.
"There's a storm brewing," she says. "Should we lower the main sail?"
I guess if you spend a lot of time on boats, you just pick all this salty language up.
"After all," she purrs, while they roll around on the floor, "I did invite you to come aboard."
So then he ends up falling overboard, and they have to rush him back to the hospital in an ambulance.
What's Up Nurse! has this odd habit of slipping between narrative-driven comedy and pure slapstick, and you never really know which you're getting from scene to scene. For example, after Todd gets wheeled into the hospital, Carthew the ambulance driver (Graham Stark) stands there in the hallway, cracking walnuts.
"You're making a mess on the floor!" Snaps Matron (Kate Williams), the head nurse.
"Well, I'm quite fond of me nuts," he explains.
And then the other nurse pirouettes through the frame.
"I thought I told you to stop pirouetting!"
Every so often, weird shit like that happens.
Dr Ogden is, of course, annoyed that he's been called in for more of Todd's bullshit.
"You needn't have come in," Dr Todd tells him. "It's only a mild concussion."
"More's the pity," snaps the doctor, and then storms off, leaving the slightly concussed doctor in charge. A guy shows up in the emergency room with a jam jar shoved up his ass, so Todd and Carthew use plaster of Paris and a broom handle to get it out. They milk this lame gag for a lot longer than you'd think. Eventually, the guy ends up rolling down a hill on his gurney, a broom handle sticking out of his ass. He crashes into a guy holding a sign that says "The End is Here".
And so on. There's a fairly awesome scene with a group of girls tossing a ball around in the nude, but it takes a while to get there: a patient comes in suffering under the delusion that he's swallowed a live frog. Matron tells Todd he comes in regularly with the same complaint. They usually just give him a sugar pill and send him on his way. Todd figures he can cure him once and for all by pretending to do a surgical procedure on him to remove the phantom frog. They put the man under, but now Todd needs a frog. First he goes to the local pet shop, but the owner is no help, and tries to sell him a stuffed owl. Next, he decides to go to the source, heading down to a local creek and wading around in the mud looking for frogs. That's when he runs into the naked girls. They think he's a masher, and call their boyfriends, who beat him with sticks and drag him off.
Oh, and then a monkey shows up in the emergency room. And then a constipated gay guy shows up. The gay gets an enema and passes out, and the monkey gives the doctor the slip and ends up blowing the gay guy. At this point, I no longer have any idea what the fuck is going on.
Helen is launching a new boat, so she invites everyone on board for a party. Carthew brings a dropper full of drugs to dose some blonde's drink, but Nurse Julia grabs it out of his hand and gulps it down. Naturally, she ends up performing an impromptu (and impressive) strip tease.
Through a series of ridiculous circumstances, Todd and Olivia end up picking up a yacht for Helen in France and sailing it back to England. Olivia tells Todd the boat is "self-navigating", so they spend all their time fucking in the cabin. Amazingly, they do not get stuck this time, which prompts Todd to propose to her. Olivia gets so excited she sets up some flares, which causes an explosion, blowing them both off the boat. And then it sinks. They're rescued by a bunch of Indian dudes who were stowed away in the yacht.
I am not sure why - it was Olivia's fault, after all - but when they get back, Dr. Todd ends up in jail. Olivia talks the police chief into letting Todd go because they need him at the hospital, but only if he's handcuffed to a constable, which makes for a very uncomfortable scene when a lovely young lady (gorgeousZoe Hendry, Confessions of a Window Cleaner) comes in, complaining of - ahem - chest pains, and later, when Todd has to perform an appendix removal on the guy who's boat he sank.
Everything comes screeching to a climax in one of the weirdest happy endings I've ever seen. And around here, that's saying a lot.
Like most British sex-coms from the 70's, What's Up Nurse! is full of well-known and well-respected television actors who you will not recognize unless you are actively British, but even without a working knowledge of Graham Stark's resume, this is a relentlessly cornball but often funny bit of tits-out trash that does not skimp on the skin, even in this ridiculously truncated form. The girls are all above average in the looks department - never a given in Britsploitation flicks - and Devonshire in particular stands out for her bubbly, up-for-anything personality. A Page 3 girl before she took up acting, Devonshire appeared in a raft of T&A flicks between '71 and '78, including Intimate Games (1976), Secrets of a Door to Door Salesman (1973), and 3D epicThe Four Dimensions of Greta (1972). Sadly, 1979's Sex and the Other Womanwas her last film appearance. Sadly for us, I mean. She became a property investor and now has one bazillion dollars.
Director Ford followed this one up with What's Up Superdoc! in 1978. In 1984, he started the amazing Don't Open 'Til Christmas but quit in apparent disgust halfway through shooting. Not enough tits, most likely. He shot a couple direct to video softcore flicks in the 90's, but mostly concentrated on writing erotic novels. He died in 1995. He was only in his 60's, but let's face it, the guy gulped down at least a couple lifetimes while he was here.
Availability: What's Up Nurse! is available on DVD.
Directed by Jeffrey Schatzberg Starring Demi Moore, Jon Cryer, George Wendt Rated R USA
"Hi, I'm Charles Cummings." "Big fuckin' deal."
Quick, what's that goofy 80's movie where Demi Moore plays a struggling rock singer who meets a naïve young kid who falls in love with her and concocts loony ideas to make her famous? That's right, 1986's nutzoid classic, One Crazy Summer. But what if I told you there was another film with the exact same description released two years earlier, a long-forgotten 'comedy' that traded John Cusack's woe-is-me cartoonist for a perpetually sarcastic high-school photographer essayed by a baby-faced Jon Cryer? You'd be beside yourself, surely. And get this: said film also throws in Tim Robbins as a dope, Jennifer Tilly in nerd glasses, a nipply EG Daily, George Wendt as a grabby nightclub owner, and Lana, the sexy neighbor from Three's Company, as Cryer's mom. How, with such a winning cast and well-worn plot, could No Small Affair end up languishing on the dusty bottom shelf of cinema for so long?
Probably because it's not that good. But hey, it does have a bunch of Twisted Sister songs on the soundtrack!
Cryer is Charles Cummings, a bored, snotty high school kid who works part-time as a portrait photographer. He's got a clueless mother (Ann Wedgeworth, instantly recognizable as Lana, Jack Tripper's hot-to-trot next door neighbor) with an ex-hippy boyfriend, Ken (Jeffrey Tambor) and a jaundiced outlook on life that borders on the depressive. Charles gets into trouble at school a lot ("I got a call from his principal. He was caught taking pictures of flies in his French class"), which prompts Ken to sit him down over waffles and offer some advice. "Being weird and different is not where it's at, Chuck," Ken tells him. "It takes energy. Energy you could put into being normal. If you put in the effort, you have a great shot at being a successful normal person." That's actually fantastic advice. I could've used that talk in high school.
Charles, Leonard, and Susan head out for a night on the town. They attempt to get into a topless club, but under-aged Charles gets the boot. Leonard suggests Susan show off hers (she's poking right through her t-shirt anyway), but she refuses. They end up at a smoky bar called Jake's, run by...well, a fat dude named Jake (Norm himself, George Wendt).
Singer Laura Victor (Demi Moore) is on stage with a band, rocking the fuck out. Charles is transfixed. He pulls out his camera and starts snapping pictures, which somehow provokes a riot. Later on, after the dust clears, Laura's guitar player quits, which makes her cry. Jake consoles her by squeezing her ass while he hugs her.
Next night, there's a bachelor party for Leonard where a bunch of dudes sit around guzzling vodka and watching VHS porn. Is that how bachelor parties usually go? Seems depressing. Anyway, one of the guys hires a hooker for Leonard, a classy looking blonde in a business suit named Stephanie (Judith Baldwin, the actress who replaced Tina Louise in the Gilligan's Island TV movie), but the party's in a one-room apartment, so Lenny has nowhere to ball his whore. Charles says he knows a place, and the next thing you know, everyone is at Jakes, watching Demi sing a song while her hair is jutting out of the top of her head in a reverse pony tail.
I'm not sure how Jake's would serve as a suitable fuck-and-run spot, but everybody seems to enjoy the show, at any rate. Later that night, Leonard wakes Charles up and presents him with Stephanie, who takes her shirt off and chases him around the room. He starts to panic. "It's just like swimming," she tells him, sorta inexplicably. And then she pops her bra off, revealing a couple of very impressive sweater-pups. She keeps 'em out for several minutes, which is nice. Charles decides he's not ready to start banging hookers, and opts for a simple hug instead. What?
The next day at school, Charles is getting hassled by blockhead Tim Robbins, when Laura rolls up in a Porsche, dressed in thrift-store chic, and asks him to 'snap' her back at her place after school. He's so excited, he moonwalks. In your face, Tim Robbins!
Charles shows up at her paint-splattered hipster loft, and Laura's gives him a whole sourpuss routine. She tells him that Jake hired a new band for his club, and in desperation, she offered to sleep with him, but he told her he had too much respect for her. Not only does this completely contradict his ass-grabbing behavior from 20 minutes ago, it also seems highly unlikely. A free pass at a 22 year old Demi Moore, and Norm from Cheers doesn't take it? Impossible. She eventually cheers up though, and they head to some wharf. Cue the "taking pictures" montage, complete with a soothing lite-rock track from Rupert "Pina Colada Song" Holmes. And then they crash a Greek wedding and get loaded, and then Demi lipsynchs a tune very badly . Oh, and while they were out having ice cream, they passed by Mona(Jennifer Tilly) Charles's initial love interest, who was playing Ms. Pac Man.
At the end of the night, they stumble back to Laura's place, and when they get there, she reverts back to her whiny, self-pitying behavior, which somehow prompts Charles to take the several thousand dollars in portrait money he'd earned (he was saving up to go to photography school in Milan or something) and get taxicab ads plastered all over town with Laura's face and phone number on them. Since the tagline of said ads is "She's the Best", people naturally assume she's an escort. Her phone is ringing off the hook, and dudes are chasing her down the street. So, she's pretty pissed. She shows up at Chuck's school and lays into him. "Just stay away from me," she growls at him. "You're a weird kid, you know that?"
Charles calls up a reporter and gets the whole dumb story in the newspaper, and suddenly, Laura's the hottest ticket in town. Jake shows up and convinces her to sing at the club again. She caterwauls through "My Funny Valentine" while a dude plays the keytar. Crazily, everybody loves it. Meanwhile Charles, despondent over Laura, wanders around in the pouring rain wearing a garabage bag, looking for diseased hookers to kill him.
So, will a hooker stab Charles to death? Will Laura's new lite-jazz direction take the country by storm? Will Charles come to his senses and realize that goofy Mona is his true love? Will Bobcat Goldthwait and his retarded brother win the boat race?
Oh yeah, wrong movie. That's really the problem with this one. One Crazy Summer is the same story, just funnier and cooler. But still, given the cast, the crazy mish-mash soundtrack (Twisted Sister, Rupert Holmes, Zebra, Fiona, Malcolm Mclaren), and some decent Demi side-boob, No Small Affair is definitely worth a look.
PS: Jennifer Tilly got way hotter after this.
Availability: No Small Affair is available on DVD.
Directed by Paul Glickler Starring Stephanie Fondue, Denise Dillaway, Jovita Bush, Brandy Woods Rated X USA
"Hey, baby...antihistamine."
Quite clearly the lynchpin between the innuendo-laden Beach Party movies of the 60's and the tits-out teensploitation wave of the 70's and 80's, The Cheerleaders manages to be wide-eyed innocent and balls-out raunchy at the same time, a neat trick that quickly became the blueprint for the genre. Every successful teens n' ass flick released in it's wake, from Porky's to American Pie, owes The Cheerleaders a huge debt.
Inspired by the runaway success of 1970's 3D soft-porn spectacular The Stewardesses, director Glickler figured another uniform-themed T&A flick would make a bundle, and after watching a crew of mini-skirted majorettes strut their stuff at a parade, the idea of sexed-up high school cheerleaders hit him like a proverbial ton o' bricks. His initial attempts to get the film off the ground were met with skepticism and/or hostility - we are, after all, talking about the sex lives of teenagers - but once drive-in distribution legend Jerry Gross (I Drink Your Blood/I Eat Your Skin) got involved, Glickler's loony idea became reality. It was a non-union gig cast with pseudonymous non-actors and first-timers - even the film's writer, "Ace Bandage", was a mystery man - but somehow, all the parts fit perfectly together. It was released regionally in the spring of 1972, and by the fall, it was number one in the country. Never underestimate the wondrous, hypnotic powers of high school cheerleaders.
As our story opens, the Amarosa High football team is on their biggest winning streak in years, thanks in no small part to their cheerleading squad, an elite group of skinny homewreckers whose voracious school spirit is matched only by their raging adolescent libidos. Said squad consists of head cheerleader Claudia (Denise Dillaway), rhyme-master Bonnie (the awesomely named Jovita Bush, who is either black or just seriously tanned), the constantly horny Debbie (Brandy Woods), frizzy-haired exhibitionist Suzie (Clair Dia), and, umm, the blonde one, Patty (Kimberly Hyde).
The cheerleaders are so popular that they have their very own section in the girls' locker room. The other girls peep around the corner, watching them dress, dreaming about being on the squad. One girl in particular, baby-faced Jeannie (Stephanie Fondue), is particularly enamored with them. She decides she'll do just about anything to join the team.
A word, or two, about Stephanie Fondue. This was her only role, and very little is known about her. Even director Glickler is at a loss. All he knows for sure is that her real name was Enid, that she'd done some nude modeling for magazines, and that she was very free and open with her body, even suggesting to the director that she shoot her sex scenes for real. It's unfortunate that she wandered away from film after just one appearance, because on the basis of her role here, she would have been a bonafide cult-movie goddess, easily on par with the Linnea Quigleys, Edwige Feneches and Linda Blairs of the world. In fact, Stephanie Fondue is one of the reasons Boobs! - the book, the blog, the cultural movement - even exists.
She's amazing in this film, from the punky, chop-top haircut to her awesomely zonked line delivery, to that generous and knowing grin. Once you've seen her wrestle (naked) with an entire football team or shoot (again, naked) out of a room one the crest of a broken waterbed wave, well, she will not soon be forgotten. We love you, Stephanie Fondue, wherever you are.
Anyway, the cheerleaders tool around in a nifty white convertible and, when they're not practicing their cheers or seducing older men, they're hanging out at the hamburger stand. Leif Garret-esque Jon (Richard - ahem - Meatwhistle) is the school's go-to action man, and when he rolls up to the stand, the cheerleader's all have requests for things like get-out-of-class-free cards and "3,000 birth control pills - pink ones". He happily obliges, but balks when Claudia tells him she wants him to get the cheerleading squad out of sixth period classes, permanently. "That's a tall order," he says. "Well, why don't we go somewhere and discuss it?" She purrs.
Cut to: Claudia and John fucking inside his car as it rolls slowly through the Beaver Carwash. Sex and suds everywhere.
Norman (Jonathan Jacobs) is a bushy-haired nebbish who shuffles from one menial job to the other. At this point, he's working at the car wash. Doe-eyed Jeannie is hopelessly in like with him, but Norm barely knows she's alive. As Claudia and John go at it inside, Jeannie brings Norm a burger and asks him what he thinks about her trying out for the cheerleading squad. Seems one of the cheerleaders got pregnant and had to quit, so there's a mid-season slot open. "Yeah," Norm says. "Having my girl on the cheerleading squad might be good for me in the business world." "Norman, a car wash is not the business world," sigh Jeannie. I cannot imagine what sort of crazy, awesome world this would be if Normans really did end up with Jeannies.
Jeannie asks Bonnie and Debbie if they'll help her get on the squad, and invites them over. After dancing suggestively to acid rock, Bonnie sums up Jeannie's chances: "Not while you look like a hag from the rag bag," she says. After encouraging her to put on a too-small outfit she'd been using to dress up her teddy bear since she was 12, they wander off to find the men of the house. Bonnie discovers Jeannie's brother masturbating in his bedroom and offers him a pleasant alternative, while Debbie attempts seducing Jeannie's goofball, golf-crazy dad.
"Gee Mr. Davis," Debbie says, picking up one of dad's golfballs, "I like your balls." Dad, naturally, gives her an impromptu golfing lesson. "Let's go for a hole in one!" He says.
Jeannie comes bounding in with her new outfit, her nipples jutting jauntily through her tiny t-shirt. Dad gets so upset he accidentally sprays himself in the face with a bottle of Coke. Bonnie walks into the room, a satisfied grin on her face. "What's going on?" She asks. "Aw, Jeannie's old man has a thing about tits," says Debbie. "Yeah," laughs Bonnie. "It runs in the family."
Poor Jeannie sulks, and soon, our first major plot point comes to light. "I'm never going to be a cheerleader," she sighs. "Cheerleaders get all the boys and everything." "But you have a boyfriend," says Debbie. "That guy from the car wash." "Norman is my boyfriend, but I hate him," she says. And then she tells them she's a virgin. "You must be the last one in California!" Says a shocked Debbie. "Norman thinks I'm a piece of toast," says Jeannie, sorta inexplicably. "Buttered."
This movie has the best dialogue ever. Ever!
Jeannie goes to the cheerleader tryouts and she's horrible, but when Bonnie tells head cheerleader Claudia she's a virgin - and therefore less likely to get pregnant like the last cheerleader to leave the squad - they decide to give her a chance. First though, she has to be initiated. Her mission: take a shower in the boy's locker room. The other girls tell her the football team won't be done practicing for an hour, so she strips down and lathers up, but wouldn't you know it, it was a gag, and the team comes stampeding into the shower with her. She ends up under a pile of soapy man-flesh, barely making it out with her virginity still intact. Not the smartest idea, if the squad wants to keep her chaste until the season's over, but for sheer visual impact, it is truly one of the greatest scenes in teen se com history, and it is doubtful any other actress (well, besides Tara Reid, maybe) could have pulled off full-frontal pratfalls with such goofy comic grace.
And then Debbie fucks the hamburger guy, and Claudia fucks the coach. And then Patty fucks the lesbian gym teacher. There's a lot of fucking in this movie.
On the bus ride home from school, Jeannie grouses to Suzy about how she has no idea how to seduce a boy. "It's easy," Suzy tells her, and to prove her point, she randomly picks a dude on the bus and grabs his crotch. "I'm wise to rise in your Levis", she says, amazingly. Then she unzips the fucker and does him right there on the bus. So yeah, it is pretty easy.
Jeannie tries to use a similar approach when she (literally) runs into Norm, now some sort of grocery deliveryman. "Norm, you've got pies in your Levis," she tells him. She hasn't really gotten the hang of sex-talk yet. "Keep a mule on the stool." "Jeannie, what are you talking about?" asks Norm, sensibly. "Norm, you're so cute," she says, pressing on. "You know why my thighs have a sty in your eye?" Norm's had enough of her nonsense. " I don't know what's been getting into you lately," he complains. "Nothing's been getting into me," Jeannie says. "That's the problem." And then she bails. Meanwhile, Suzy, still not satisfied, fucks the bus driver. While he's still driving the bus.
There's some sort of weird subplot involving John and Novi, the creepy janitor (Raoul Hoffnung). Novi sells John some weed and then tells him that Amarosa have to lose the big game. Says the orders come all the way from 'the top'. "The ol' fixaroo", says Novi.
So that's going on. Also, Novi wants to know when he gets what's coming to him, ie sex with a cheerleader. Something those two creeps worked out. "Don't get your liver in a quiver," John says. "Just go home and sit tight. This could be your night." There's a lot of rhyming in this movie, in case you haven't noticed yet.
Meanwhile, the cheerleaders are all sitting around in sexy positions (they are always, always sitting in sexy positions. Yet another reason why Paul Glickler deserves some sort of God-of-Boners award) trying to figure out how to get Jeannie laid. They're thinking about placing a classified ad in the local player. "We should try the hard sell," says Bonnie. "Come get a cheerleader's snatch, never a key in the latch." I should point out that Jeannie's supposed to be sixteen years old. Man, the 70's were nuts. Flim-flammy Jon shows up and seduces Jeannie with a French fry. He takes her back to his groovy pad and things get nuts.
Turns out it's not John's house at all but Novi's, and they come up with an elaborate plan for Nov to fuck Jeannie while he's wearing a bear suit. There's also toe sucking and Benny Hill-esque skirt chasing, complete with sped-up film and slamming doors. Jeannie does not get boned by anybody, but she does break a waterbed and comes shooting out the bedroom door on a wave of foamy water.
The next day, the cheerleaders are out playing miniature golf together. "It was all very beautiful and John was very romantic," Jeannie says, trying to piece the previous evening's events together, "But then there was this bear..." The girls figure Claudia, being the head cheerleader and all, will be able to figure things out for Jeannie. She pulls herself away from her mini-golf lesson (a midget is instructing her, naturally) and assesses the situation. "Them," she says, pointing to a couple of grimy bikers.
"They're wonderful!" Jeannie gushes, giving them a lascivious wink. Claudia takes them all back to her place, where she fucks one of them in the dirt (beating him senseless while she does it). Jeannie attempts to get it on with the other scuzzball in the bushes, but then her dad shows up (Claudia's mom is having some kind of outdoor luncheon) and she freaks out, running through the tea party topless.
Finally, it's the night before the big game, and the cheerleaders have a slumber party at Jeannie's house, where they smoke weed and cavort around in sheer nighties. It's a bit of a washout until Jon shows up with the entire football team in tow, and then things quickly devolve into a full-on orgy. It is only until the team passes out in a sex-drained heap that the girls realize the error of their ways: having depleted their players of their vital man-juices, how can they win the game against the Central City Boars tomorrow?
Their solution, not surprisingly, is to drive out to Central City and fuck the other team as well, just to even things out. And that's what they do, hunting down all the key players wherever there are - at the drive-in (I Drink Your Blood is playing), at a garage, in various bedrooms and backyards all over town. Debbie even comes crashing through a table in a pizza joint.
The next day, both teams are so exhausted, they can barely play at all. Except, that is, for Central City's fourth string quarterback. Him, they missed, and now he's the only player with enough energy to win the game. Whatever will they do?
This looks like a job for Jeannie the virgin.
Funny, sexy, and weird, The Cheerleaders is a genre classic by anyone's standards. It was quickly followed by a flurry of 70s' cheersploitation movies, most of them starring Rainbeaux Smith, none of them directed by Paul Glickler, who decided to quit while he was ahead. The cheerleader film is still in full-swing as we speak (the latest, Fired Up, was just in theaters), and will likely continue to thrive as long as dudes still like looking at enthusiastic chicks in skimpy outfits. So forever, most likely.
As of this writing, the whereabouts of the actual cheerleaders is unknown. I'm guessing grandmother type stuff at this point. Oh, and as far as Jeannie's haircut goes, the "Stephanie Fondue" was later appropriated by Cherie Curie and Joan Jett of the all-girl 70's rock band The Runaways.
It is survived by lesbian sister folk-rockers Tegan and Sara.
Availability: The Cheerleaders is available on DVD.
I'm sure I've groused about this already, but I've never really understood this whole 'softcore' sex trip- I mean, have you ever had softcore sex? I think I might have once, in the parking lot of the Ground Round, but I'm still not sure about that one. Still, there's gotta be a big, meaty market for the stuff, since Playboy (who produced this dizzy little epic) has a whole network dedicated to non-insertion sex. Still. In 2009. It's pretty crazy. At any rate, the idea of a hard 'R' rated flick about an all girl rock and roll band clawing their way to the top brought to my fevered mind classic cinematrosities like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Desperate Teenage Love Dolls and Down and Out with the Dolls- hell, 'Dolls' is even in the title- so I was pretty excited to see this one.
Vinyl Dolls starts the same way every movie about a rock band does- with the guitar player quitting in a huff, right before a major gig. They never play her songs, man.
So Alex splits, which is a serious snag, since she does it right before the girls have to play "12 sold out shows in a week!" I don't know if any band in the history of rock and roll has had a schedule like this. Certainly not a local LA club band. Certainly not a local LA club band that sounds like some half-assed cross between Janis Joplin and Kelly Clarkson. Anyway, this short-haired chick, Nola (Tiffany Shepis) rolls into town from Las Vegas- she's on the run from her drug dealer boyfriend, of course- and shows up last for replacement guitarist auditions. Naturally, she's the best guitar player they ever heard.
She gets the job, and they proceed to play said 12 sold-out shows. How she manages to learn the band's songs in one day is yet another curious mystery of Vinyl Dolls. Things are going swell for the band until the drug dealer boyfriend shows up, and then all hell breaks loose.
Luckily, Nola happens to be banging the local sheriff, who solves the only dramatic dilemma in the entire film with a couple punches to Mr. Coke Dealer's nose. Everybody lives happily ever after. Except for me, maybe.
Every scene in Vinyl Dolls is punctuated with a ten-minute phony sex scene. So, if you're just looking for story, you can get through it all in 20 minutes, which is merciful. If you really do wanna watch faux-sex (erotica, some might call it), then I'd say you oughta pay close attention to the band's drummer, Ander Page. I think she's got three grope-a-dope scenes in this one, and there's a good reason why she's so convincing in them- she's actually a porn star. Or at least she was -her trail ran cold around 2006, but not before she left behind a legacy of seriously raunchy sex flicks. It's a real gas watching her in the 'behind the scenes' featurette, talking about trying to get over her nervousness at getting naked in front of a room full of people for this production. I'm guessing her first ATM scene over at the Redlight Disctrict warehouse cured that up, but quick. Still, I mean, look at this face - is this a porn star face?
Clearly, Miss Page took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
I think the most remarkable aspect of Vinyl Dolls, however, is the music. For a movie about a rock and roll band, the songs they play are about as far away from rock as you can get. Not surprisingly, a guy named Herman Beeftink" (!) wrote 'em all. They sound exactly like the work of one of those sweaty guys running around LA all day shoving their demos into the hands of any A&R hack they can find- "You gotta hear my new song, it's perfect for Britney!" You know the type, or at least you've seen them on TV. The music on Vinyl Dolls is the work of all those clowns rolled into one. Director Beale must either be 60 years old or deaf to buy into Beeftink's cracked musical vision.
Of course, despite all this, I still watched the whole thing. Why? Tits. That's why. Same as you. If you really want to see a phony all girl band frolicking around, tho, I'd suggest the similarly themed Heartstrings, from VCA. At least that one's got anal scenes.
PPS: Tiffany Shepis went on to become the coolest girl in the world.
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